Why are some breweries unable to brew great beers?

I didn't realize that Constellation had acquired Ballast Point. The fact that the acquisition became official would explain why Ballast Point beers have been completely unavailable in my area for the past several months. They're almost as bad as A/B when it comes to selective unavailability in market areas with heavy local craft scenes.

 

That can be compensated for by the brewer/brewery establishing a trained team of beer tasters to provide proper QA/QC control. I know of a few brewers (breweries) that have done this.

Cheers!

@honkey @Sixpoint

 

I started to respond to this thread yesterday, realized what I wrote sounded too condescending and never posted the response. I agree that a lot of brewers haven't practiced training their palates and that it could potentially be compensated for with a tasting panel, but I think that's a much more difficult process. Experienced brewers with good palates can quickly identify the positive attributes of various beers. If you don't have that, maybe you can make some guesses and run some test beers through a tasting panel, but that makes recipe development a much longer process.

I think the basic reason that some people continuously brew mediocre beer is lack of experience and lack of a discerning palate, or lack of the ability to be self critical.

Edit to add- Even with a great palate, I personally think some form of a tasting panel is important. For us, that means sending our beers off to independent panels. At Blue Pants, I had trained a 12 person panel (actually 15, but we normally only had 12 people show up).

 

I don't think it has been mentioned yet, but in my experience, a lot of "craft beer" especially IPA has gone south in general due to the distribution and handling practices.

I remember when a bottle of Ballast Point Big Eye or Sculpin off of any shelf in San Diego tasted like magic. Now it usually tastes (and is) old and dull. The only way I could get the good stuff again is getting kegs directly from them after a batch was made.

Also dirty draft systems. It’s hit or miss which bars or restaurants are ruining a good beer.

Maybe OP got a bad one.

 

It would not be wise for any brewer/brewery to rely on a single person's palate for QA/QC of the batches being produced. I am not sure is 12/15 is a 'magical' number but I am certain that just relying on one person's palate is not the proper number.

Cheers!

@SixpointMikey

 

12 was the number we determined to have statistical importance. 15 people were trained in order for us to always have 12 people do the tasting

 

You're thinking pedio infecting a brewery. It can happen. Many beers with Diacetyl are just due to poor yeast management. Yeast will reabsorb Diacetyl with the proper time and temperature.

 

So true! I went to a tap house in downtown Seattle northend and was excited to try a few beers including one German dark beer. It was awful as were a few other samples, so I did not linger, cancelled my food order.

Went to a small German restaurant in West Seattle, Prost! West Seattle, and related to the waitress that I wasn't interested in the one beer, but she reassured me it would be good, and it was (it was in a bottle). It was all about the tap lines at the bar/tap house being bad.

 

I agree with water often being an issue. Arches Brewing in Atlanta specifically focuses on water profiles for the beers they make. They brew some outstanding beers. Their Mexican Empire Vienna Lager is one of the best I've ever had for that style.

 

While it certainly can be a VDK issue from poor fermentation practices, I'd be more concerned that it was a Clostridium sp. infection due to poor sanitation practices, rather than a Pediococcus sp. infection from cross contamination. In that case the butter would be due to Butyric Acid and not diacetyl. Obviously, this could also be a tap line contamination issue, as well. Regardless, if a brewery (or bar) serves me up a glass of butter, I'm not fucking going back to that place EVER.

 

You've never been to a Ringwood yeast brewery that doesn't know how to manage that beast? That is what I was thinking of.

Pedio makes diacetyl, and doesn't reabsorb it. If it is used with Brett, the Brett cleans up the diacetyl. Source was a talk by Vinnie Cilurzo years back.

 

Hehehe. Yeah, that's one finicky yeast strain, but other highly flocculent yeast strains can cause the same issues.

Actually, any yeast species can accomplish this, but, yeah.

 

Fwiw, it's not so much how finicky or flocculent the yeast is, but that the Pugsley "system" has them crash-cooling the beer at their desired terminal gravity and not when the yeast is actually finished.

 

There is also the employees that drag, shuffle, slam the kegs then immediately tap them and pour foam out until they get a decent pour. Or pull them from room temperature and tap them and serve until they get cold in the box, etc..

I find it hard to judge any beer recently because I am always wondering if it is the true intended representation of the brewer.

 

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that styles are great things for brewers to understand, even if they aren't going to stick to them - they're often the product of many brewers over many decades tweaking and experimenting and seeing what works best.

On the other hand, yeah, if the general public consistently like beers that don't fit in with your understanding of styles then you need to update your understanding of styles, not educate the general public.

 

LOL, and talk about not getting a decent head on beer--really a challenge in the USA. I keep teaching my bartenders!!! First I start by showing them a range of German beer types poured in Bavaria...

 

Another option may be that people's locavore instinct is so strong that they would rather drink mediocre local beer than superior regional or national beer. Or that people like to hang out at breweries but don't particularly enjoy beer THAT much (which is weird I guess?). They attract a young, fun crowd.

There was a local brewery that opened recently and the owner stated he wanted a place to drink beer and hang out with his friends. So... why are you brewing your own beer then? They opened with the usual traditional styles with poor to average execution. They head brewer they are using had no commercial brewing experience. But they had the money to start it up. There are several local homebrewers that probably would have been a better choice, but they weren't friend with the right people.

 

There's a name for people like that.

Stupid.

 

I think this is a very good point. People find breweries hip and trendy at the moment. A lot of those people don't even really like beer, or at least what they perceive beer to be (ex: insert Light AAL brand of beer).

They just want to hang out with their friends in a place that society tells them is cool because it has exposed rafters and industrial light fixtures.

 

When that brewery is your first stop after work, any beer is going to taste amazing. Freedom adds a little rating boost, kinda like hype.

I do have a coworker that raves about one of the many micro breweries that have opened up over this past year. I finally paid them a visit and got a flight, and I don't think I was able to rate even one over 4. I hypothesize that with so many local breweries popping up, it's becoming easier for average consumers to build a focus on one local brewery. Instead of ordering the same beer from the same bar every week, they're visiting the same brewery every week and that one is 'best' because it's all they know, it's close to them, lots of fun memories there, etc. etc.